Term 4 Week 2

Hello,

We are filled with gratitude that you are the parents that we have worked with during home learning. Discussions we have had with colleagues at other schools have reminded us that not all Prep teachers have been as fortunate. We thank you for working with us as a team to ensure the best outcomes for the Preps.

Back to school procedures

In the mornings, please drop your child off at one of the school gates. If you would like to drop them with the Prep teachers we will be at the Wonder garden gate each morning.

In the afternoons, please meet us on the junior oval. Each class will come out and wait for you in their line up areas. We remind you that you will need to be wearing a mask and that you will need to leave as soon as you have your child/ren.

Hats

A reminder that all children will need to be wearing a school hat for outside play and PE lessons.

Word study

This week we will be learning two codes that make the long 'o' sound ‘oa’ as in 'boat' and ‘oe’ as in 'toe'. Next week we will introduce ‘gu’ as in 'guess' and ‘ph’ as in 'phone'.

Over the next two weeks we will be using both the Reading and the Spelling Tools to Boot camp capital letters. Students will practise writing them and understanding when we use them – At the start of a sentence, titles of people, places, days, months and special celebrations.

Reading

All Prep classes are working on students' Independent Reading skills. Each day students will choose a take home book and a book of choice from the classroom library and read independently for a short period of time. Students will develop their ability to choose suitable books for themselves, based on their ability to read independently and of genres and topics of interest to them. It will also develop their reading stamina. During this time teachers will be conferencing with individual students to discuss the books they are reading, listen to them read and develop reading goals with them.

Writing

We will begin our return to onsite learning by observing children's writing behaviour to enable us to accurately plan our next steps in their learning.

We will also be focusing on capital letters in support of the boot camp on the use of capital letters. We will be looking at when to use capital letters and full stops in writing.

In the coming weeks the students will be involved in a series of science lessons and we will use this as a stimulus for writing. The children will be hypothesizing about what will happen, recording observations and writing about the results of experiments.

The Inquiry Hall will be a source of inspiration for writing as well, with students using magnifying glasses to observe nature, exploring books about different life cycles and creating detailed labelled drawings of life cycles.

Numeracy

The preps will be using Maths games to improve their number fluency. They will be given the opportunity to solve Maths problems through collaborating with their classmates. During this time the teachers will be conducting assessments with the students. This will help to inform us where each student is at and will influence our planning for the weeks ahead.

Unit of Inquiry

This week we will continue to explore different life cycles and the use of accurate vocabulary to describe their stages.

To support our learning we will be working with our Science teacher, Julie Murray, on a series of experiments that support the concept of Change. These sessions have always been very popular in the past. We will be doing two sessions this week to make up for sessions that we would have normally done earlier in the unit.

We took a break from unpacking boxes on Friday to set up the inquiry hall. For this unit of inquiry, the different areas are all linked to Science ideas and provide the Preps with lots of opportunities to develop their observation skills. Many of the areas have magnifying glasses. Not only will they be developing their observational skills but this will be a good opportunity for the Preps to continue developing their group work skills as they will be sharing materials and interacting with class mates.

Well being

We are predicting that the Preps will be quite tired by the end of the week as the school day is longer than what many of them have been doing during home learning. They may also be more active at playtimes. Tiredness has a big impact on resilience. We understand that during lockdown bedtime routines may have changed but would encourage you to try and return to school bedtimes. The last thing we want is the return to school to be marred by 'tired tears'.

The other thing we are expecting is that the Preps will be hungry more frequently. Many parents have reported to us that their child has been 'grazing' throughout the day. To avoid your child being hungry during learning sessions we would encourage them to have a big breakfast that will sustain their energy until play lunch time.

The Prep team

0A - Kathryn Morrison

kathryn.morrison@education.vic.gov.au

0B - Deb Barden

deborah.barden@education.vic.gov.au

0C - Danielle Palombi

danielle.palombi@education.vic.gov.au

0D - Julie Daniel

julie.daniel@education.vic.gov.au

HU - Krystle Horadam

krystle.horadam@education.vic.gov.au

Prep Fortnightly Snapshot

Issue 20 · 11 Oct 2020

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